The Wyrms of &alon

Breakfast was my Pel’s famous toast. She fried them in oil before planting cinnamon-dusted banana slices on them—slices baked halfway to melting—dusting them with sugar and secret mix of sweet spices and then finished it off with a dollop of doysenberry jam and hybrid chocolate-maple-syrup drizzle. In an ordinary family, it was the kind of dish that would be passed down from one generation to the next. In our family, Pel had learnt it—and all of her recipes—from the cook her parents had employed at their penthouse estate when she’d been a girl. If the best thing I could say about my mother-in-law was that she was not my father-in-law, the second-best thing I could say about Margaret was that she did not cook. From the depths of my soul, I knew that if she cooked, it would come out purple, gooey, burnt, overcooked, undercooked, wet, dry, likely carcinogenic, stank like Hell warmed over, and probably defied a baker’s dozen of city health ordinances. She just had that sort of “charm” about her. Fortunately, the Howle household was spared such horrors. On mornings—particularly weekend mornings—our kitchen rivaled one of the two-hundred year old bakeries that clustered by Codman’s wharf, fighting the stench of cod smoked or salted with a delectable smell that some said was stolen from Paradise itself. Being in our kitchen in the morning wrapped you up like fruit filling in a pastry, and you wanted it to never let you go.

Unfortunately, the demands of life, fatherhood, and being a grown-up had other plans, and, in short shrift, I found myself in the driver’s seat of the L85, taking the kids to school while en route to work. As usual, Jules sat in the front, dour-faced, with her school-bag resting on her blue plaid skirt and wireless headphones in her ears, crooning smelly teen spirit in her ears, direct from her PortaCon in her hands. The maestoso finale of Jordan Gallstrom’s Symphony No. 2 in D major resounded inside the car. The timpani-punctuated ostinato in the trombones and strings came on with perfect timing, just as we swept through the Expressway on-ramp.

From his position in the back seat, Rayph raised his arms and went “Woo!” as he often did on the on-ramps.

Jules rolled her eyes at him, and then asked me to turn down the volume of the radio a little. Of course, I obliged her.

As a tyke, Jules had been scared of the Expressway at first, but she’d quickly grown to love it, just like Rale would a couple of years later. I’d uploaded my audio files from the house into the car’s console and set to occasionally interrupt the usual programming—be it the radio or my playlist—with a selection from 100 Immortal Arias, and we’d all sing along with nonsense words whenever one came up, and if Jules had tried to resist the urge, Rale’s enthusiasm would quickly win her over.

But, again, that was when she was little, a decade in the past.

The morning sky hung over the city’s skyscrapers, splattered with ruptured clouds that bled pale purples and gray. Come afternoon, wind and Sun would sweep it all away.

Rayph demonstrated his penchant for aggravatingly bad timing by leaning forward, sticking his head between the front seats, and shouting “Okay Dad, change to 2320” just as the opening movement of Gallstrom’s Second reached its stirring conclusion.

“But… the second movement is so beautiful!” I said, trying not to whine, and kind of failing.

The adagio really was beautiful, and beautifully played, at that. The strings intoned the opening chorale passage with the moving solemnity.

“But Daaaad, the Morgans’ new track is out today!”

“Oh, really?” I could see my eyebrows rise in the rear-view mirror.

Rayph flashed an elfin grin. “Yeah! It’s called Doobie-Woobie! Their last track was called Boobie-Doobie, and the one before that, Shoobie-Woobie. I don’t know what the one after next is gonna be called, but I bet it’s gonna be great!”

“Sounds very… innovative… of them,” I said.

It wasn’t that I disliked contemporary music (though there were a few exceptions to that rule). Rather, it just didn’t connect with me the way the classics did. The Morgans, though, I simply didn’t get at all, though not for want of trying. The Morgans’ songs weren’t just music, they were a whole worldview, one stuffed into two-to-four-minute-long capsules to be inserted directly into your ear canals. Their world-view was one of chaos; joyful, absurdist chaos, but chaos all the same, and too chaotic for my tastes. I suppose there was some absurdist appeal to seeing Johnny B. Bad, Zongman Lark, Frédo Frédo, and Antak Goonbang dressed up in bulging afros, platform shoes, and bell-bottom pants, each with their own color scheme, gently waving their hands in the air as they engaged in their latest broadcast stunt, say, filming inside the mouth of a fish, or in the living room of an old folks’ home.

Their latest series of songs—to which Doobie-Woobie belonged—was apparently part of some sort of radical quasi-ironic deconstruction of popular musical standards that had them singing the names and numbers of the chords and chord progressions as they played them. Before that, their album Performance Album had songs about the details of their concerts and their performance practices, with tracks with titles such as We are wearing groovy hats, Dreamer screamer, and We did not write this song (We only wrote the lyrics)—though, honestly, We did not write this song was kind of cute. Still, I felt they lacked the incisive punch needed to make their songs function as comedic pieces independently of the details of their deliciously outrageous performance style. In that regard, the Morgans didn’t hold a candle to, say, the Twitchell Trio and their I Was Not A Nater Polka. It took courage to speak truth to power like that, especially when you were pointing out that most of the Prelatory’s major politicians who weren’t killed in the coup had been allowed to stay in the Post-Prelatory government, as if they’d never been involved with the purges or the labor camps at all.

“So, can you put the Morgans on, Daddo?” Rayph asked.

“Wouldn’t you prefer to watch the music video tonight, at home?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, but—”

“—Next,” spake the radio’s disk jockey, “Costranak Dance No. 7, by Eckhart.”

The famous sensuous, airy melody and pitter-pattering rhythms began to waft out from the speakers.

“I love this one,” Rayph said. “Turn it up!”

I raised my hand and held it there, making a point of not moving until—.

“—Please,” Rayph added, finally remembering.

I smiled. “There we go,” I said, softly.

I turned up the volume, but then he shook his head, pursing his lips in frustration.

“No,” he said, leaning back into his seat, “I mean… I wanna hear the Morgans!”

Glancing over to Jules, I managed to catch the briefest of smiles gracing her’ face. Our opinions of the Morgans were one of the few things my daughter and I still seemed to have in common.

I sighed. “Fine, fine,” I said, as I changed the station, having admitted my defeat.

The fatuous (but, admittedly, kind of catchy) song was over and done with by the time I pulled up along the curb of Prescott Noctis™ Elementary School. The bulk of the school was hidden from view, obscured by an impressive, abstract-looking frontal façade. Imagine a half-finished building, still mostly steel frame, and then slide layer after layer of wavy metal sheets in a mishmash and then paint it with a glittery blue that glistened when you passed, no matter the hour of the day—that would give the general idea it. Far more importantly, though, their auditorium was absolutely amazing, with acoustics to die for.

“Have a good day, sweetheart,” I said, as Rayph got out of the car. “Here’s wishing you luck for tonight!”

“Thanks, Dad!” Rayph said, before swinging the door shut.

Pressing my foot to the pedal, I pulled away from the curb, bracing myself for the coming storm.

Silently, I did a countdown in my head.

Three…

Two…

“Hey!” I yelled, “watch where you’re going!”

A driver had illegally cut through the intersection around the corner from the school. His car came to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. The vehicle’s warning lights came on, flashing their red alert.

Now, where was I? Oh, right: the countdown.

Jules plucked out one of her earbuds, cutting off the music with a tap at her console’s screen.

“Do I have to go to his play?” she asked.

Here we go again.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

“I have tests coming up soon after,” she added, “and I’d rather stay home and study for them.”

I sighed. “Jules, we went to every one of your plays.”

“That’s not the same,” she said.

There was a moment’s pause.

“It will never be the same,” she added, “and we all know it.”

She was right. I did. But that didn’t make it any easier. Quite the contrary…

The car tilted back as we turned up on Hasteway Street. Elpeck was famous for its seven hills. You’d have to travel far and wide before you found city streets as steep as ours.

“Come on, Jules, honey. Do we have to go through this every time your brother has a big event? Hasn’t it been enough already? What would Rale have said?”

Turning away, Jules looked out over the bay through the passenger-side window.

My heart sank into my chest. I almost pulled over to the curb.

“Sweetheart…”

“I don’t understand how you can move on as if nothing had ever happened. I don’t think Mom does, either. It’s like you want to shit on the memories. Or would you prefer they were all lost to time?”

My mouth went dry. I didn’t even bother to chastise her for her language.

“Sweetheart, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. Not a day. And it hurts. Every time, it hurts. It’s like I can’t breathe.”

Jules turned to face me. She crossed her arms. “Of course you ‘can’t breathe’. You’re drowning yourself in work. At work. That’s why.” She turned away.

I sputtered, just as I pulled the car up to the curb of Agan High School. “Jules, you know I—”

—Jules shook her head, reached down, picked her book-bag, slung it over her shoulder and opened the door and stepped out of the car.

“Have a good day Dad,” she said, flatly.

I craned my head toward the open door.

“I love you, sweeth—”

—She slammed the door shut and walked off to class.

I idled there for a moment, watching some of the other girls stare at my daughter as she made her way onto Agan High’s classic, verdant campus. I wanted to go out and say something, I didn’t want it to end there… but I knew I couldn’t. Not again.

It would only make things worse.

With a long groan, I rested my head upon the steering wheel, and for only the second time today, I admitted defeat.

Beast and Queen… I’m such a mess.